


Human Things

by DameRuth



Series: Fantastic [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25039537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Just another day at alt!Torchwood; picks up a while after "The Dream of a Fantastic Life." The Doctor plays the "I'm all right" card one time too many.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2008.10.07 - 2008.10.12. This one is unfortunately still a WIP, and kind of brings the rest of the planned series to a screeching halt, but, as noted, is a stub that could be expanded upon, and it's worth archiving on AO3 for that purpose.]
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: Fantastic [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812130
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of writing irons in the fire, and this one reached "chapter break" status first. So, here's what I have thus far. More to come, obviously! ;)

The warehouse was a chaotic mess, full of Vornat smugglers (most of them on their knees, hands behind their heads, some still disguised to look like humans and some not), UNIT troops (mostly taking charge of the surrendering Vornat), and billowing smoke from the transmat device the Doctor had just shorted out before the Vornat could make their escape.  
  
All the same, Rose and the Doctor had no trouble spotting one another amidst the chaos. Brown eyes met hazel, locked and held. It was as if the rest of the world had vanished; the two of them ducked around humans, aliens, crates of contraband, and random debris without needing to look at anything but each other. When they finally met, their embrace was epic. The Doctor hoisted Rose clear off her feet, and she held on to him as if he were the only solid thing in the world. All that was missing was swelling orchestral music (heavy on the strings) in the background.  
  
Donna, weaving through the various obstacles with more conscious effort -- though no less speed -- rolled her eyes and huffed in annoyance.  
  
“Oi, you two!” she yelled as she approached. “Give it a rest, will you?”  
  
Rose and the Doctor broke apart and blinked at her. Their expressions were a trifle dazed, but at least she had their attention.  
  
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re missing the head honcho — remember, nasty tweed suit, like something Oxfam would toss in the bin? I’m looking, and I’m not seeing any tweed here,” she said, drawing to a halt next to her two Torchwood partners and making a sweeping gesture to indicate the warehouse at large. “My guess is he’s either taken off running, or gone back to the office to wipe the computer records.”  
  
“Right,” the Doctor said reflexively, still a little misty-eyed. Then his gaze sharpened and his voice tightened. “Right,” he repeated, shifting back into the intensity of his working mode.  
  
He and Rose disengaged, Rose reaching for the comm unit at her belt to alert the UNIT and Torchwood people working the perimeter, while the Doctor reached into his jacket pocket for the cobbled-together gizmo he called his “sonic spanner” (“Too big for a screwdriver,” he’d said cheerfully the first time he’d unveiled it, confusing Donna but making Rose laugh).  
  
The Doctor swung the spanner in a wide arc until it buzzed. “Hah! It’s the offices!” He was off in a single greyhound bound, and Donna was right behind him. Working for Torchwood had done wonders for her running. Behind them, Donna could hear Rose shouting orders, organizing backup and redirecting the perimeter teams, but she tuned it out almost immediately. Her blood and adrenalin were up with the thrill of the chase . . . and a fair dose of aggravation, too.  
  
_Of all the times for UNIT to horn in,_ she thought, skidding slightly on a tight corner, _turning this into a giant circus with soldiers and guns and bloody great lorries everywhere._ If Torchwood had been able to run the sting alone, things would already have been wrapped up without all this mess and fuss. She fully intended to give someone (she wasn’t sure whom yet) a real piece of her mind when this was over — though she’d have to yell especially loud to be heard over the Doctor, who’d be doing the same exact thing.  
  
She was distracted enough she nearly bumped into the Doctor, who'd come to an abrupt halt at at a T-junction. He was shaking the sonic spanner, which was clearly not cooperating. He thumped it with the heel of his hand and it gave a sad squeak before dying completely. The Doctor growled in a way that conveyed more and blacker thoughts than any profanity could. Looking over his shoulder at Donna, he said, "I'll go right, you go left -- call out if you find anything."  
  
"Right." They split up and began opening doors as they worked their way down each half of the corridor.  
  
Donna's third door turned out to be the one they were looking for.  
  
The head Vornat, looking very strange in his ugly tweed suit, given that his projected human disguise had failed, looked up from the smoking remains of what seemed to have been a very ordinary Earth computer. In his hand was something that could only be a gun or energy weapon of some sort -- clearly, he'd decided to take the fast way out as far as destruction of evidence went.  
  
Donna stopped short, and the weapon swung around to point directly at her.  
  
A great many things ran through Donna's mind, almost simultaneously. First and foremost was that, while Vornat were generally docile, this one was clearly at his limit.  
  
She could hear the Doctor's calm, firm tones as he lectured a mixed classroom of Torchwood recruits and UNIT exchange students: "Just about any creature will fight if it thinks it has no other option. That is our job," he'd paused, glaring over the rims of his reading glasses for emphasis, "to provide options."  
  
And finally, she found herself thinking, _They're right, any weapon looks way bigger when it's pointed at_ you . . .  
  
Another of the Doctor's maxims surfaced from memory: "If you can keep someone talking, chances are they won't be shooting. So talk. Get them talking back. It doesn't matter what you say so much as the fact that you're saying it."  
  
"Okay," she said, holding her hands up in the universal (she hoped) gesture of nonaggression. "Look, mate, there's no need to bring guns into this. This isn't that kind of raid. You're just looking at deportation," under the unsympathetic eye of the Shadow Proclamation, but she wasn't going to be that honest, "nothing more. We can be calm about this . . ."  
  
The Vornat's weapon hand dropped fractionally, and Donna felt the first spark of relief . . . which was brutally squashed by the earth-shaking rumble of running footsteps in the corridor: lots of heavy-booted footsteps, approaching like a herd of elephants. The weapon swung back up to point directly at her.  
  
Donna swore silently and fervently. If she lived though this, UNIT was going to be _very_ sorry.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given the way the writing was working out, thought I'd break this into shorter (but more) chapters.

Moving quickly the Vornat stepped forward and grabbed Donna, swinging her around so her back was trapped against his body and she had a marvelous view of the UNIT boys jammed into the office doorway. Something cold and hard pressed into the soft skin just underneath the angle of her jaw. She could guess it wasn't the butt end of a stapler.  
  
Bloody fripping hell. It was the classic hostage situation, the one she'd always thought she'd never be in because, well, she was cleverer than that.  
  
She hated it when the Universe called her on her ego.  
  
"Ssssstand b'hack!" the Vornat yelled in her ear, and God his breath was foul. The UNIT troops blinked like a bunch of big, heavily-armed sheep. If looks could kill Donna would have caused them to vaporize on the spot. Fortunately, their brain cells managed to process the information in front of them ( _hostage, one of ours . . ._ ), and most of them lowered their weapons.  
  
"Look, we're all getting way too excited here," Donna called out. "We need to just calm down . . ."  
  
The Vornat, completely ignoring her, shoved her forward. He was yelling something more, but it didn't make any sense at all, just vowels and fricatives -- he'd lost track of the language he was using, Donna guessed. That _couldn't_ be good.  
  
"He means it," Donna yelled at the UNIT troops. She didn't have the faintest bloody idea what her captor was going on about, but she was certain he meant every word. "Back off!"  
  
The scared young men in front of her -- boys, for all their weapons, and what the hell was UNIT doing sending untried troops into an alien contact situation? -- gaped, obviously unprepared for what they were seeing and hearing.  
  
"Do as she says!" one of the UNIT boys snapped, unexpectedly. His voice had a solid whipcrack of command to it, even though his insignia marked him as a private, no more. For a moment, Donna met his clear blue eyes, which were wide and scared but also intelligent and focused. She would have thanked him, but there was no time. That, and the Vornat squeezed his non-gun arm tightly around Donna's ribcage, leaving her with just enough breath for staying conscious.  
  
Whether from her command or the nameless private's, the UNIT troops shuffled backwards, and Donna was shoved forward out into the hallway. The Vornat kept his back to the wall -- good instincts, blast him -- and kept babbling on as he edged along to the side, heading for the T-junction. The UNIT boys were still edgy, obviously freaked out nearly to their breaking points. When the Vornat's monologue broke into an earsplitting screech, there were flinches and weapons-twitches all around. In response, the Vornat tightened his grip on Donna even further, the gun grinding painfully into the soft angle of Donna's jaw, and she had a panicky moment to wonder if it would actually hurt when her head was blown clean off . . . but when the explosion came, it was as as a sharp _snap_ just outside her ear, followed by a spatter of warm wetness, the report of a gunshot and a terrible scream from her captor.  
  
Donna was thrown forward, hard, and her right hand went out automatically to catch her fall. It worked, but the carpet she landed on had been laid directly over concrete without further padding and there was a very unpleasant sensation in her wrist as she made contact. She flipped reflexively onto her back, and caught a quick, blurry, horrible image of the Vornat flailing and screaming -- a high, thin desolate sound -- as he waved the mangled stump of a hand (projecting from the sleeve of that tacky tweed suit) and sprayed purplish blood in all directions; a second wound, in his shoulder, pulsed a thicker, more sluggish stream of alien blood. There was no sign of the weapon he'd been holding. _Disintigrated, gone,_ Donna's addled brain decided.  
  
_"Shit! MEDIC!_ " The voice was that of the blue-eyed private, who had the good sense to move in and begin applying pressure to the Vornat's wounds.  
  
Dazed, Donna rolled in the direction the crippling shot must have come from, and found an even more bizarre sight: the Doctor, teeth bared in a fierce snarl, still holding a pistol in firing stance ( _where had he got the gun from? He didn't even take part in firing range practice, much less carry a gun on his person . . ._ ), the weapon absolutely steady even though he was breathing with deep, desperate gulps.  
  
For a half-second, Donna's eyes met his, and she flinched. She couldn't help it. He was her friend and partner, and she'd thought she knew him pretty well, but she'd never seen an expression like this on his face before: that black, devouring, uncompromising rage. She knew then that she hadn't seen him angry before -- irritated, peeved, frustrated, yes . . . but not truly angry.  
  
He registered the eye contact, she saw it . . . and his face went closed and still. With one flick of his thumb he put the safety on the pistol and then threw it violently aside, to clatter unheeded off the far wall of the corridor. He turned, and behind him was Rose, her face stricken. She moved to follow the Doctor, and then the UNIT and Torchwood medics arrived, almost simultaneously, like an after-the-fact avalanche of assistance, and Donna lost sight of both her partners in the chaos.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, another short chapter, and a start to the hurt (and comfort) that can happen in even the best of relationships . . .

As it turned out, Donna's wrist was sprained, not broken. Torchwood's medic, Maria, gave Donna a brace; the UNIT medic, as if to not be outdone, offered Donna a more-than-prescription-strength painkiller. She got the impression he was, in a clumsy way, trying to make up for the way his organization had just given "gone pear shaped" entirely new meaning.  
  
All the same, she wasn't above giving him the brush-off. "If it hurts, that'll remind me not to use it, yeah?" she growled, and managed, finally, to extricate herself from the mob. The injured Vornat had been sedated, stabilized, and hustled off in the direction of Torchwood's xeno ward, but that wasn't where Donna's concerns lay right now.  
  
It hadn't been more than fifteen minutes since the gunshot, even though it felt longer. Mop-up teams were everywhere, and Donna scanned desperately for a familiar glance of spiky brown or sleek peroxide-blonde hair.  
  
Luck was with her and she found her partners outside the warehouse, in the cold, grey drizzle of the day. She stopped when she spotted them, craning her neck and trying to gauge whether or not she should approach.  
  
The Doctor was leaning with one shoulder against the outer wall of the warehouse, hands in pockets, his back to Donna, gazing off into the distance. Rose was as his side, her hand slipped through the bend of his free elbow. Her body was turned entirely towards him, and Donna could see the worried, desperate way she looked up at her unresponsive beloved. Everything about Rose spoke wordlessly of the desire to comfort, and everything about the Doctor radiated a countering distance and detachment. Donna stopped where she was -- this was between the two of them, that was clear.  
  
Rose said something, and the Doctor turned his head to look at her. His expression in profile was bland and distant, as if he'd only just now noticed Rose's presence at all. He pushed away from the wall and turned towards her. Donna held her breath, hoping desperately for a hug of the sort she'd interrupted earlier, but the Doctor merely rested his hands on Rose's shoulders. He said something, with a small, insincere smile as cold as ice . . . then dropped his hands, stepped round Rose, and strode off into the chaotic mess of vehicles parked around the building.  
  
Rose made no attempt to follow. She simply stood and watched him walk away, her hand pressed to her mouth, looking very small and alone.  
  
_Now_ it was time for Donna to step in.  
  
Rose saw her coming, but didn't say anything as she approached. "Is he all right?" Donna asked, gently, by way of an opener. It was about as rhetorical as a question could get, based on what she'd just witnessed, but it seemed the safest thing to say.  
  
Rose dropped her hand from her mouth, and managed a short, unhappy little laugh. She wasn't crying, but her eye makeup was smudgy, and her nose sounded plugged. "According to him, he is."  
  
"Different definition of 'all right' than the rest of us use, is that it?" Donna asked, letting her tone go dry. Rose's answering laugh, if still short, was more genuine.  
  
"Something like that," she replied, and reached up to blot at her eyes with the back of her hand, taking care not to smudge things more badly than they already were.  
  
"How about you?" Donna asked, voice softening again.  
  
"I just wish . . . I just wish he'd let me _help_. I'm supposed to be helping him," Rose replied, meeting Donna's eyes with such a lost expression, Donna was forcibly reminded of Rose's youth. Normally, the difference in their ages passed unnoticed, aided by Rose's intelligence, experience, and confidence. It was easy to treat her as the equal she was, most days. But every now and then she was a twenty-two-year-old girl.  
  
"Of course," Donna said, reassuringly. "It's what being in love is all about."  
  
Rose made a half-hearted gesture of negation. "No. Well, yes, but I mean, I'm supposed to help him heal. Specifically. I did it before, but he was . . . different then. I could talk to him easier. Now, he just closes off and walks away, and I don't know what to do. I've tried giving him his 'space,'" she drew sarcastic quotes in the air, "but it doesn't help, not really. It just gives him time to bury it all again."  
  
"The PTSD?" Donna asked. Rose had mentioned something of the sort before -- just as both of them had told her a lot of odd little snippets about their mutual past, many of which sounded downright mental. The Doctor being half-alien (formerly fully alien, but exactly how the transition had come about, neither ever said), crossings between Universes, wild adventures in a time machine that was also a spaceship and looked like a phone booth . . . she was never quite sure whether to believe any of it, though if any two people could be telling the truth about such things, it was Rose and the Doctor.  
  
PTSD, though (whatever its source), _that_ she believed. Hard not to, given what she'd just seen.  
  
"Yeah," Rose said, sounding tired and defeated. "That's the best word for it." She sniffed, obviously struggling to pull herself together. "God, I can't just stand here like this. We've got this whole mess to clean up, and a medical emergency . . ."  
  
"If you mean the head Vornat, the medics have that under control," Donna told her. "You can take a minute, if you need it."  
  
"Maybe I do," Rose said, and ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, no longer caring the slightest for her makeup.  
  
"Oh, come here," Donna said, finally losing the battle with her buried maternal instincts and pulling Rose into a hug. Given the way Rose hugged back, those instincts had been entirely correct.  
  
_Looks like there'll be a lot of extra mop-up, this time,_ Donna thought, already planning excuses to her mum and Gramps for why she would be home later than usual. 


End file.
